


They look so pretty when they bleed

by FuryBeam136



Series: Whumptober 2020 but bad [10]
Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27106585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuryBeam136/pseuds/FuryBeam136
Summary: Whumptober 2020 day 10Prompt:Blood loss| Internal bleeding | Trail of blood
Series: Whumptober 2020 but bad [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951480
Kudos: 17





	They look so pretty when they bleed

He’s fought his way out of Tartarus more times than he can count by now. The Erinyes are barely a concern anymore. But he keeps his guard up nonetheless. Tisiphone in particular always seems to have a new trick up her sleeve just to pull out on him when he least expects it. Or maybe her sinister appearance is finally getting to him. He isn’t sure.

Meg is, of course, the easiest to predict. He’s known her for as long as he can remember, their battles are like a dance, rehearsed and practiced and beautiful. And each time he fights her, there is less animosity in the air than the time before.

Alecto is the opposite. With each victory he manages to pull off, she only gets angrier. Still, he suspects she’s growing fond of him in her own twisted way. The way she throws nicknames at him one after the other, derogatory but vaguely familiar, feels like it can’t be anything but some twisted form of respect.

Today, or perhaps tonight, because of course, it’s hard to understand the passage of time here where there is no sun or moon or stars, he is to fight Alecto. She mocks and taunts him with her nicknames. And he takes it all in stride with an easy smile and easier posture and calls Stygius to his hands.

“Shall we get on with it then?” he says, as casually as if they were meeting for work. Which, technically, he supposes they are. Her job just happens to be killing him.

“Don’t rush me, redblood! You won’t like what comes of it,” she taunts, as though she has ever been able to beat him without the benefit of surprise from the first time he ran into her rather than Meg.

“No,” he admits, “I don’t suppose I will.”

“Well, if you’re eager to bleed…” Alecto cracks her whip, grins at him. “Bleed for me, redblood.”

She makes the first move, as to be expected. She is aggressive to a fault. He dashes out of the way, raises Stygius off his shoulder, swings. She doesn’t get out of the blade’s path. She never does.

Stygius hums contentedly as her blood traces the patterns on its blade. Zagreus feels the way it thirsts for more as though the blade were an old friend. And well, it is, in a way. An old friend who has helped him fight his way out of Tartarus as many times as he asks.

Her whip lashes again, and he feels it catch his skin between his shoulder and his neck. Blood drips from the wound, but he presses on. Her grin is wild and excited, as though he were a pinata dripping candy and she were a child, spun around in circles and handed a baseball bat to swing at him until he burst.

Unlike a pinata, he can react to her swings. She is wild and unpredictable, which, strangely enough, leads to a sense of predictability. She’s easy to trick into stepping on the spike traps littering the chamber, single minded as she is in her quest to make him bleed.

And bleed he does. Her whip catches at his side this time, at the exposed skin between the skull belt around his waist and the fabric about his shoulders. She is grinning at him with pointed teeth, shouting cries of fury with each movement and laughing when her whip tears slivers of flesh from his skin. Stygius is coated in blood, both hers and his, and no longer seems to care which it drinks.

He comes out on top, like he always does, but not without a good amount of injuries. Blood drips from open wounds and Stygius drinks from them thirstily as red flows onto its blade. He stumbles into the safety of the chamber between Tartarus and Asphodel, and allows himself to slump beside the fountain. Its waters are cool and refreshing as he drinks what he can. His wounds close. He lifts his head, but the world spins around him.

He thinks he’s lost a bit too much blood. Alecto would probably be pleased to hear that. He doesn’t really like the idea of telling her. He sighs, letting Stygius vanish into the air beside him. A break is what he needs. Something to eat as well, he thinks, was it Thanatos who told him that? Than would know how to stave off death. Or maybe it was Achilles who taught him that one. He was a mortal man, once, he would know how to preserve a life. Or maybe it was Skelly, during a lull in taunting him into beating him into powder.

It doesn’t matter who told him. He knows it’s what he needs. He hauls himself over to the well of Charon, counts the obols in his pocket. He doesn't have many, but he has enough to buy a few strips of cyclops jerky.

He stands up, and walks towards the fiery fields of Asphodel.


End file.
